weemba@garnet.Berkeley.EDU (Matthew P Wiener) (08/21/88)
The TABLET article had a comment about simulation that remined me of
this, which I'd typed up long ago:
The following is the 29 Jan 1988 editorial in SCIENCE, that well-known
journal of boffo yucks. OK, so it's not the NATIONAL LAMPOON, but at
least it is funnier than THE JOURNAL OF SYMBOLIC LOGIC.
The following is copyrighted 1988 by AAAS; let's hope they don't sue.
HOMO PHOTOSYNTHETICUS
In a recent television commercial for a computer company, a young stu-
dent stated that she was morally opposed to dissecting a frog in her
high school class and suggested that an equally good alternative to
such animal experiments was a computer program. At first glance one
might scoff at such an approach, but on consideration it raises a number
of intriguing issues. Aristotle, many years ago, emphasized deductions
about science at the cerebral level, devoid of the unpleasantness of
actual experiments. This television advertisement is probably a logi-
cal evolution of such thought, and reveals a type of Utopia that is
worth pondering.
Frogs are of course one of the more obvious species for application of
such a strategy. There a number of clues abut the insides of a frog,
such that it arises from a tadpole, that it causes warts, and that it
may turn into a Prince Charming when kissed by a beautiful princess.
>From such data, a moderately well-trained student should easily be able
to deduce what the interior of a frog looks like. On the other hand,
there are many other species for which an equivalent amount of informa-
tion is not available. Those species could be studied at more advanced
levels, after students have been exposed to a lot of life by watching
daytime television.
Even if the pedagogical problem is solved by computers, there is the
annoying problem of getting the Food and Drug Administration approval
of new drugs. There seem to be some silly congressional requirements
mandating animal testing in order to show whether chemicals are carcino-
genic or teratogenic. Replacement of costly and time-consuming animal
experiments by computer programs is likely to be greeted with great
enthusiasm by industry. If the FDA should take the stodgy position
that research is required on animals, the FDA itself could be replace
by appropriate computers, and any computer expert who could not devise
a better software program than the US Congress would be fired on the spot.
The computer encroachment need not stop at these simple levels. There are
a number of instruments of torture far more inhumane than dissecting an
anesthetized frog--for example, the mousetrap and flyswatter. These de-
vices have no redeeming social value, such as advancing teaching or re-
search, but merely represent domination of one species over another. A
good software program should eliminate the need for mousetraps and thus
prevent the maiming of many mice. In regard to flies the problem is more
difficult because flies have few neurons and may not be diverted by a
simple algorithm. One could at least enact legislation requiring that
flies be anesthetized before they are swatted.
Even if animal experiments have to be done for research, it is questionable
whether students should be asked to repeat them. A good clean simulation
is superior to a bloody real experiment. Consider, for example, the moral
shock of the young student who finds that the stomach of a real frog con-
tains mosquitos, flies, and small grasshoppers. Far from being the beloved
and harmless frog that she imagined, she finds a predator actually eating
other species with no regard whatsoever for their rights. Letting that
frog live condemns many mosquitos, flies, and other insects to their deaths.
This moral trauma is inappropriate for an immature student who may then
conclude that the world is not nearly as simple as she had imagined. A
computer simulation could replace the stomach contents with materials such
as potato chips, soda, and other emotionally neutral nutrients. At some
point the advanced high school student, however, is going to be concerned
by the large number of fish, cows, and pigs that are sacrificed for mere
food, and the large number of abandoned dogs and cats killed simply because
they are too expensive to keep. People who talk to plants will insist that
the biochemistry of animals and plants is so similar that eating plants
undoubtedly induces pain at the molecular level.
The obvious answer is to develop genetically engineered human beings who
photosynthesize their own food. There might be some minor life-style
inconveniences, such as the need to sit under a lamp for several hours
on foggy days, but there is little doubt of the moral superiority of this
solution. Whether such a human can be engineered from computers alone is
a problem, but fortunately there are lots of flotsam and jetsam of society
--lawyers, homeless people, and stockbrokers, for instance--who are less
likable or less protectable than frogs and can be used experimentally in
this good cause. The only moral problem remaining is to prevent insiders
from taking their money out of restaurants and investing in sweetened CO2.
--Daniel E Koshland, Jr
ucbvax!garnet!weemba Matthew P Wiener/Brahms Gang/Berkeley CA 94720